The Original Mr. Olympics

Once upon a time — a few days before they lit the torch for Athens 2004, if memory serves me — your humble blogger penned his usual preview of the planned Olympic broadcast coverage for the Ottawa Sun.
(at least it was 'usual' procedure for seven Games while I was there).
Often, those pre-Olympic columns would revolve around an interview with the CBC's then-dean of the Games, Brian Williams (now at TSN). A veteran of the sporting Big Show that I dubbed the network's "Mr. Olympics" before those Summer Games in Greece (it was such a good reference that Peter Mansbridge used it to introduce the esteemed Mr. Williams before the Mother Corp.'s coverage of the opening ceremony in Athens. Undoubtedly a coincidence ... but I digress).
While we Canadians have set our clocks, so to speak, to Williams' direction of prime-time coverage of the Games over the years — gawd, we're gonna miss him in Beijing this summer — another TV broadcaster south of the border had already set the standard for how an Olympics should be presented.
To me, ABC's Jim McKay was the original Mr. Olympics, a distinction and honour he is most worthy of wearing. And this isn't just being said out of necessary respect on the day on which McKay passed away at age 87.
For someone who developed a passion for all things Olympics at a young age, McKay was the gold standard for it all. The man you trusted to give you the straight goods from wherever the Games were being held (a dozen times in all), back when ABC was America's Olympic network (pre-1990s, for those who don't recall).
Of course, McKay is most famous for his work on that terrible day in Munich in 1972, when he carried us all through what would end up being the darkest moment in Olympic history: The massacre of 11 Israeli athletes by Arab terrorists.
"They're all gone," McKay told us when the awful news was confirmed, the tone of his voice truly offering up all that needed to be said.
While McKay's longest association was with ABC's often wild and wacky Wide World of Sports — the anthology show that gave us "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” — I will always remember him as the man who spoke in front of the five rings so many times.
Forever, he'll be Mr. Olympics to me.

And Then There Were Four ...

It's one power-packed final four in the race to win the bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Yes, the flame hasn't even been lit yet in Beijing (Aug. 8, 2008 being the big date there), and we're already talking about a Games eight years down the road. But the International Olympic Committee has settled into a routine of awarding its big show seven years out and for 2016 than means, well, a vote in October of next year in Denmark.
That final four? Tokyo, Madrid, Chicago and Rio de Janeiro.
A fifth candidate was almost added but IOC president Jacques Rogge said a highly regarded bid from Doha, Qatar, was dismissed because organizers there wanted to hold the Games in October to avoid summer's searing heat.
Now, we all know the road to winning a Games takes many twists and turns along the way and the lobbying gets fierce, to say the least. So it's probably foolhardy to even attempt to predict a winner this far out. But some thoughts to consider ...
We'd suggest Rio might be the politically correct pick, being that the Olympics have never been held in South America. Soccer is righting a similar wrong in two years time by bringing its World Cup to South Africa. Is it time for the Olympic movement to perhaps start thinking along those lines? Rio, however, rated at the bottom of the IOC's technical rankings of the four bids (6.5). Yes, there's definitely some work to be done there.
While Tokyo wound up with the highest technical rating (8.4, just ahead of Madrid's 8.2), again, it's bidding to bring the Games to Asia eight years after Beijing. But Japan's capital last played host to the world in 1964 and perhaps the IOC voters will be persuaded that five decades is long enough to wait for another chance (even if Japan has held two Winter Olympics since, with Nagano the last host in 1998).
Madrid finished third in the race for the 2012 Olympics, which were awarded to London. The question being, will the IOC go to Europe for back-to-back Summer Games? Not that it hasn't happened before ...
Then there's Chicago, a distant third (7.0) in the technical rankings (which, we should all be reminded, don't mean everything in the end). By the time 2016 rolls around, it will have been 20 years since the U.S. last was home to the Summer Games (1996 in Atlanta). Don't forget, though, that U.S. television networks shell out the most money by far for Games broadcast rights. Many of the largest Olympic sponsors reside there, too.
In other words, never underestimate the power of the American dollar.